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Sunday, 23 September 2012

More Diverse Universe Blog Tour

Aarti at BookLust is hosting A More Diverse Universe blog tour which celebrates speculative fiction written by people of colour.

Malorie Blackman: Noughts & Crosses

For my post, I've chosen Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses. Noughts & Crosses was Malorie Blackman's first direct treatment of racism in her novels. It is based on an alternative history which pretty much amounts to a flipped apartheid. It's a harsh and brutal story that doesn't hold back its punches. And it's great for teens today.

The reason I've chosen Noughts & Crosses is for three reasons:

1) It's a book that really gets under my skin because although speculative, much of the material in the book is based on past and current happenings (just switched);

2) No matter how often I remind myself that Noughts are white and Crosses are black, in my mind's eye, I flip them back. Just an observation......;

3) New editions for the four book sequence have just been published in the UK and the new jackets are still quite stark but with a splash of colour and more grit. Covers that, in my opinion, reflect the content of the novels perfectly.

14 comments:

I've had this series on my radar for a while! I forgot about it, though, until your comment about the switching of blacks and whites really connected for me. Thanks for jogging my memory and for participating!

Aarti, so many people over here love this series - and they do it in schools too. I don't find it a comfortable read but, being speculative, it's able to drive home what most of us already know (or experience) in reverse. And for those us of who don't recognise it, well, then it's a timely eye opener. And thanks for doing the blog tour.

I read your interview with the author Martyn Bedford and that sparked my interest in his books, now I am even more curious about them. Thanks for this review and I'm glad you were able to participate in this blog tour.

Four books out already? That's promising (as I don't like to read a book and then wait a long time for the next in the series ;-)) It's a good series to highlight for a Diverse Universe. For one, I wasn't familiar with the series at all, before reading your blog posts about it!

Those editions are sure striking: no wonder they caught your reader's eye! I made a note of the first book in the series awhile ago, but I hadn't realized there was more to the story. Thanks for nudging them onto my reading radar!